Exposed

Abusive neighbour threatened woman saying he would “make her disappear”

An abusive neighbour told a woman living in his building that he would “make her disappear”.

David Peapell, 47, of Timor House in Withyham Avenue, Saltdean, threatened Phillipa Davis despite an injunction banning him from doing so.

Peapell was handed a three-month suspended jail sentence for breaking the injunction to protect neighbours from long-running bad relations.

Mrs Davis said: “I was walking through the grounds of Timor House towards the outer hallway door.

“I saw Mr Peapell who began to follow me on foot as I made my way.

“As I reached the door, Mr Peapell shouted out, ‘What are you doing, you like your flat, yeah? Well think long and hard, it won’t be for long when I make you disappear’.”

Speaking at a civil case brought by Hyde Housing Association yesterday, she added: “I noticed he had a very serious look on his face and his eyes in particular were piercing to look at – he was clearly very angry.”

The threat in the afternoon of January 9 came despite the injunction taken out in October by Hyde to protect Mrs Davis and other residents.

Peapell faces a possession hearing – at which Mrs Davis is due to give evidence – over the flat .

He denied having made the threat, telling the court he had not seen Mrs Davis at all that day and suggested she made the allegation as she wanted to be moved herself.

Peapell also produced a receipt showing cigarettes bought in the local Co-Op five minutes away at the time he was meant to have made the remarks.

Defending, Christopher Prior told Brighton Magistrates’ Court: “Basically one party [is] saying I saw him and the other party is saying I did not.

“He has produced a document which shows that, at the very least on face value, when the incident happened according to Mrs Davis, he was four or five minutes away.”

But Judge Simon Coltart believed Mrs Davis and found Peapell had breached the injunction, adding that video footage of Peapell after he was arrested showed him to be “capable of becoming aggressive or abusive in his language”.

He added: “I am completely satisfied so that I am sure that Mrs Davis’s version of events is the correct one.”

He handed Peapell, who was in custody between his arrest on January 9 and the hearing on January 15, a three-month suspended jail sentence.